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Feeding the world

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A combine cuts rice in a field near Tucker, Ark., part of the US hit hard by drought. Danny Johnston/AP

Farmer Randy Pettinghill examines an ear of undersized corn in a field near Plumerville, Ark. Pettinghill buys water from the city of Morrilton for his farm in the Arkansas River Valley, but this year, the city put a cap on what he could have. It turns on the spigot every third night from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Danny Johnston/AP

A woman walks through a market in Luanda, Angola. Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

A French baker throws flour on dough for ‘baguettes,' the traditional French bread, in a shop in Strasbourg in eastern France. Vincent Kessler/Reuters

An Egyptian man delivering bread from a bakery drops a loaf as he cycles past closed shops in Cairo. The price of bread, which is subsidized by the government, has been rising, cutting into the nation’s already depleted treasury. Ben Curtis/AP

A worker prepares soybeans to be milled into tofu in Jakarta, Indonesia, where the price of the food staple has risen dramatically in the past year. Enny Nuraheni/Reuters

Schoolchildren dressed in traditional attire eat their breakfast before performing at a gathering in Bangalore, India. Aijaz Rahi/AP

A girl in a traditional western Macedonian outfit peers through a bakery window at the fresh baked bread in Macedonia's western village of Galicnik. Boris Grdanoski/AP

Over the years, Greg Schwarz, a farmer in LeSeur, Minn., has pledged much of his corn crop to ethanol production. Corn prices are surging today because of drought and, analysts say, because so much of the crop is going into biofuels. Jim Gehrz/AP

Muslim faithful sell bread during the holy month of Ramadan at the 'Darajani' market in the historic center of Stone Town on the Indian Ocean island of Zanzibar. Thomas Mukoya/Reuters

A Palestinian laborer harvests eggplants in a field in the West bank village of Beit Ummar, north of Hebron. Once the mainstay of the local economy, Palestinian agriculture in the rocky West Bank is in decline, with farmers struggling to protect both their livelihoods and their lands. Darren Whiteside/Reuters

Farmers break cocoa pods in the eastern Ghana town of Akim Akooko. World cocoa prices recently hit 10-month highs on uncertainty over the West African crop. Kwasi Kpodo/Reuters

A worker cleans his teeth with a neem twig at a wholesale sugarcane market in Kolkata, India. Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters

A butcher prepares meat at his stand in the Ruzafa market in Valencia, Spain. Heino Kalis/Reuters

Britain's general elections used to be straightforward: a predominantly two-horse race between Labour or Conservative governments, left vs. right, red against blue. But as electioneering gets under way for May 7 polls, it's clear the vote has implications for British politics that extend well beyond whoever comes out on top.